Says some of the amendments by DoT are at variance with its own recommendations.
Says some of the amendments by DoT are at variance with its own recommendations.
NEW DELHI: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has pointed at loopholes in the amended 3G (third generation) services policy. Days after the government revised the 3G telecom guidelines on September 11, Trai chairman Nripendra Misra has written to Department of Telecom secretary Siddhartha Behura saying that some of the amendments are flawed and in variance with the regulator’s recommendations.
Misra has found fault with the new norm that specifies that 3G licencees would pay annual spectrum charge of 1% on the incremental revenue due to 3G services after a period of one year. Trai had earlier recommended that licencees would pay an additional charge of 1% of the total AGR (adjusted gross revenue) after a period of one year. The recommendation was given “after careful and due deliberation,” Misra said in his letter.
According to the Trai chief, the authority was of the opinion that, in case of the service provider having both 2G and 3G spectrum, separation of the revenue between 2G and 3G services will not be possible.
“There will be many common control equipment for 2G and 3G and apportioning the cost/revenue to these two services will be very complex,” Misra pointed out.
He added that there is also the apprehension that “such bifurcation of the revenue may lead to wrong booking of the revenue by some of the service providers and pay lower spectrum charges.”
In an interview a day after DoT issued the amendments to the 3G policy, Misra had told this newspaper that “it’s a major exercise to separate the 3G revenue from the overall revenue”. He had also said that Trai had not been consulted on amending the 3G norms.
Another point that Misra has highlighted in his letter to Behura is on the eligibility for bidding for 3G spectrum. He has pointed out that DoT has suggested that there is a possibility of a successful 3G bidder obtaining the Unified Access Service Licence (UASL) by way of acquiring an existing UASL licencee in a service area. “In such a scenario, it is anticipated that the acquisition charges are likely to be higher than the entry fee prescribed by DoT for UAS licence,” Misra has said. The entry fee for all-India UAS licence is Rs 1,651 crore.
A little over a month of announcing the policy guidelines for 3G telecom services in the country, DoT revised the norms significantly on September 11.
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